Quote:
Originally Posted by White Out 403
The police had a decision to make on the spot; do they let the guy get in the vehicle with children that are now possible hostages, or shoot? The safety of the children and the public were in play, and they had to make a call.
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If there was some legitimate reason to think he intended the kids harm, maybe I'd see that side of the argument. But as far as I'm aware, there wasn't.
In literally any situation, you can come up with a hypothetical terrible thing that a shooting victim might have done if he weren't shot. But you can't just say "maybe", you have to have a reasonable basis for believing it's going to happen. Did the police form that view in this case? Doesn't look like it from the video. According to accounts, doesn't sound like it either (i.e. the information that's available suggests that the officer didn't even know there were kids in the car when he decided to shoot Blake).
And of course, this is all predicated on the notion that he was holding a knife, and it's not even clear if that part is true.